Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 21, 1910.djvu/575

 Reviews. 533

bird is the most important. The series usually consists of a bird, fish, snake, and plant, but a four-footed vertebrate may be added. In some parts there is a dual or a multiple exogamous grouping of the clans, which regulates many social matters. There does not appear to be any special affinity between a man and his totems, nor can he influence these in any way. All over the district a man shows more regard for his father's totems than for his mother's, which are also his own. A person can kill his own totems, and, with the exception of the bird, even eat them. In the central district totemism has disappeared, but among the Roro-speaking people of the coast about Hall Sound and to Cape Possession, and the Mekeo further inland, it is represented by clan badges. There is another strange resemblance to the natives of the north-west coast of America in the unexplained hekarai ceremony, — a series of feasts which by its rivalry and exchange of valuable property bears a superficial resemblance to a potJatch ; but a more close analogy can be found in the public exchange of food or property which occurs in Murray Island, Torres Straits.

The burial customs of the Northern Massim are particularly interesting on account of the contrast they present to those of their Southern neighbours, among whom people of clans other than that to which the dead person belonged scrupulously abstain from having anything to do with the dead body or its burial. Among the Northern Massim the whole funeral is carried through by the dead man's /udai or nubai, certain connections by marriage, who are consequently never of the same clan as the dead man.

In the Trobriands, as soon as a man dies his store of yams is divided amongst his near relatives who are members of his own totem, and several of his coco-nut trees are cut down by some of his relatives, there being no restriction regarding the use of these trees, their leaves, or their fruit. The dead body remains in the house until burial, and wailing is kept up unceasingly. When the body has been placed in the grave by the lubai, food is provided by all near relatives belonging to the deceased's own totem, and is eaten by all the other clans of the village, in which feast the widow and father of the dead man take part, having previously blackened themselves as a